Sant Joan d’Alacant Declaration defending Open Access to scientifc publications, from Publishing Group of Spanish Journals concerning Health Sciences (GERECS, from original title in Spanish)

The concept of Open Access (OA) not only pertains to scientific documentation access, but also covers more or less restrictive reuse permissions based on reserved distribution rights. From this idea, several initiatives have sprung up, on a profit or non-profit basis, aimed at facilitating universal Internet access to scientific publications.
Projects such as Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO, 1998), The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC, 1998), PubMed Central (PMC, 2000), The Public Library of Science (PLOS, 2000) and BioMed Central (BMC, 2001), pioneered a revolution that would reestablish commercial strategies for scientific publishing. Other sources include Dialnet (2001), Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y el Caribe, España y Portugal (Redalyc, 2003) and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ, 2003), would also spread the OA movement and facilitate the global knowledge process in the scientific communities throughout Latin America.
The first Declarations that set the bases for future OA development encompassed: the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, (2003) and Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003). The latter is considered the declaration of principles for the health sciences.
Furthermore, declarations have been published, generally promoted in meetings of editors of scientific journals that recommended the proper development of open access to science. In Spain, we could cite the Declaration of the Alhambra (2010), which provided recommendations for the policies and an action plan for developing open access in southern Europe. More recently, in Latin America, the Declaration of the Meeting of Consortiums of Latin America and the Caribbean (2017) was drawn up, which among its recommendations discusses the movement away from Open Access with the growing emergence of paid journals for publication with prices that are sometimes abusive (APC, article processing charges) with the Open Access label.
The last Amsterdam conference, «Open Science – From Vision to Action» (2016) formulated two important pan-European objectives to be reached in the year 2020:
. Full open access for all scientific publications.
. A new approach oriented towards the optimal reuse of research data.
To achieve these objectives, applying new assessment and reward systems for scientific works and fomenting good practice policies were proposed.
In this line, ministers of science of the European Union nations agreed, in the session held on May 27, 2016, the document, The transition Towards an Open Science System – Council conclusions, recommending that the publications resulting from publicly-funded research be made available free of charge by 2020. To this end, each country must implement its own publication policy.
This agreement underscores that the principle for optimal reuse of research data should be “as open as possible, as closed as necessary.” It also emphasizes that opportunities for the optimal reuse of research data can only be realized if data are consistent with the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable) within a safe and reliable environment.
Thus, the European Open Science Policy Platform, at its third meeting in March 2017, adopted the following recommendations:
. The interested communities, the Member States and the European Commission should jointly assess and identify how the Open Access 2020 mandate should be achieved.
. Progress towards a complete OA should take into account the speed with which the publication system changes and how academic communications grow in richness and variety.
. There is no single solution, although the ultimate goal for all disciplines may be the same. Issues related to compliance, including incentives and enforcement, should be proposed, clarified and harmonized in a manner that is sensitive to all disciplines.
. The options of payment terms for the publication should be clear and easy to locate under the conditions established by each journal.
. As of 2020, the European Commission must move towards a broader definition of OA, which incorporates the full range of formats and emerging applications as a result of scientific research.
Taking into account all the aforementioned, aware of the future changes that the editors of the Spanish journals on health sciences will have to assume, they propose the following recommendations and requests:
1. Adhere to the criteria emanating from the March 2017 meeting of the European Open Science Policy Platform.
2. Encourage our institutions to support Expression of Interest OA 2020 (https://oa2020.org/) and, consequently, sign its principles.
3. Urge research agencies at the national level to implement scientific policies that require their researchers to deposit their publications in institutional repositories.
4. Take into account the social commitment of journals in OA with the accessibility of knowledge, including citizenship, the recognition as academic/professional merit is requested for publication in open access journals that are indexed in platforms committed to excellence, such as SciELO, Redalyc or DOAJ.
Also, in line with the San Francisco Declaration on Research Evaluation (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, DORA, 2012), the editors of health sciences journals consider it necessary to support the adoption of the following practices:
1. Reduce the emphasis of the impact index, or other metrics based on indicators on the journal in which it was published, as a personal promotion tool.
2. Promote new indicators related to the scientific content of the article instead of metrics concerning the journal in which it was published.